


years built on sand

by delicatetobreak



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:04:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicatetobreak/pseuds/delicatetobreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place in S1 after 'A Thin Line Between Chuck and Nate'.  What if Serena was too late?</p>
            </blockquote>





	years built on sand

By the time Serena arrives, the helipad is empty and the craft has long departed. There’s nothing left but tufts of grass blown up onto the tarmac and Serena stands there for a while, staring silently into the distance. 

“Miss Van der Woodsen?” her chauffeur enquires. She nods distractedly and swipes a shaky hand across her face. 

“Take me home please.” It’s a hollow request though because the Presidential Suite at the Palace isn’t home. 

Blair is.   
Serena Van der Woodsen isn’t used to being ignored. Photographers trail her at fund-raising balls, grown men regularly chat her up at the hotel bar and awe-struck girls crowd around her in the Constance Billard courtyard every morning. But when she checks her voicemail, all her messages are from Dan and none are from Blair. It hurts more than she thought ever thought it would. She dials Blair’s number on her mobile but it takes her five minutes before she can press ‘call’ so that the cracks won’t show in her voice. She breathes in deeply and tries her best to sound cheerful, “Hey B, I don’t know if you got my message but call me back.”

Three weeks pass without a word. 

Then four. 

A month…then two. 

Serena has respected Blair’s privacy for long enough, she can’t stand it anymore. She’s never been one to wait. She takes the Waldorf private jet on a Friday afternoon with Eleanor’s permission. Serena packs lightly and boards with only a shoulder bag and a good magazine.

Halfway through the trip, as the steward offers her champagne, she remembers the time when she and Blair got drunk on their flight to Cabo. Serena had already been tipsy and when she poured herself another drink, the champagne had missed the flute and splashed Blair instead. They had both burst out into laughter and Serena, in a haze of drunken audacity, had leaned forward abruptly to lick a drop that was trailing down Blair’s chin. They had both stopped laughing then, the cabin silent except for the quiet hum of the engine and for a moment, Blair looked as if she was about to say something when the intercom announced that they were landing and the moment was lost forever.

-

 

The Waldorf châteaux is a quaint brownstone manor, surrounded by walls that trail with ivy and a few acres of grassy pastures. At first, Serena’s too distracted by the sun-dappled gardens and the sight of thoroughbred horses grazing in the distance to notice the girl emerging from the gates but when she does, she almost fails to recognise her.

Blair’s normally pale skin is tan from the Normandy sun and she’s dressed in a yellow summer dress that ends in a lacy hem around her sun-kissed thighs. She looks younger, more vulnerable and Serena’s heart skips a beat at the sight of her. When Blair looks up and notices Serena, her mouth falling open in recognition, they both share a moment of silent appraisal that feels so much stranger than their last reunion. This time there’s no audience to perform for, no façade to uphold. When Blair crosses the divide and takes Serena’s hands in hers silently, smiling and yet crying at the same time, her actions speak volumes in a lifetime where words have never told the truth. 

The obligatory tour ends in Blair’s bedroom, the windows wide open and the view amazing. Harold and Roman are in Provence for the weekend on some wine-tasting tour and they have the whole place to themselves. A year ago, they would’ve had a massive party. Blair would’ve ordered the champagne while Serena would be busy inviting all the boys from the university in town, beguiling them with her fractured French. They would’ve partied until dawn, starting the night with strangers but somehow finding their way back to each other by the time it was morning, like they always did. 

But a lot changes, already changed, in one year and Serena and Blair don’t know what to say, both waiting for conversation cues that don’t exist where they are. They’ve exhausted all small talk, innocent conversations about Dan, Eric, the new Zac Posen line, everything but the big things that Serena’s sure would swallow them whole if they were ever mentioned. Serena’s in the middle of an effusive description of the Palace’s newly renovated lobby when Blair interrupts, “Why are you here, Serena?”

The words don’t come out mean, only tired and sad. Serena tends to say a lot, her words gushing forth in an irrepressible stream but she’s having trouble coming up with an answer. She wants to tell Blair to come back home, that everything’s blown over, that Eleanor worries constantly about her and that she, Serena, misses her. So much.

And it starts because she has nothing to say but everything to give. Her mouth on hers, fingers languidly intertwined with locks of her hair, the moment slow and strange. They’ve kissed before, a drunken rendezvous at Chuck’s 15th, a scandalous dare at one of Blair’s sleepovers but they haven’t kissed like this. Never. 

Serena dreads the inevitable moment where Blair will reel back but she doesn’t. Instead, Serena feels her deepen the kiss and Serena pulls her closer, feverishly, her hands insistent as they reach under the hem of the brunette’s shirt to touch the soft skin of her stomach. It doesn’t take long before their clothes are scattered haphazardly around the room and Blair’s tentative moan flutters from her lips like a butterfly testing its wings. Blair’s arching her back as the blonde tastes her skin, her kisses like fire as they trail down her abdomen. Serena feels Blair tremble when she presses her lips softly against her hip. 

“Blair,” Serena whispers the word reverently and to Blair, who’s always heard her name as a cutting reprimand from her mother, a half-hearted mumble from Nate and innuendo from Chuck, it makes her feel beautiful like she’s never felt before. 

And Blair’s pulling Serena back up to her so that she can kiss her again, share her every exhale and inhale, so that she might possibly pour everything she wants to say but can’t into that one exquisite breath. Apologies, confessions, explanations…they all disappear at the touch of Serena’s fingers as they skim the inside of her thigh and Blair murmurs incoherently when she feels Serena’s knuckle graze the ache between her legs. 

“S,” Blair’s whisper is ragged and Serena obeys the longing implicit in her voice.

-

 

Serena is picking her Chloé blouse off the floor when she hears Blair’s stir under the sheets. Serena slips the blouse back on and sits at the edge of the bed, doing up her buttons as Blair sits up to watch her silently. 

“You’re leaving,” she says simply. 

“I have to go back to school.”

“Stay. Blow it off.” Serena can hear an underlying note of desperation in Blair’s imperious tone and it breaks her heart.

“…I can’t.” 

That’s a lie. She can, of course she can. There are a thousand things she’d do for Blair and more – skip a date with Dan, piss off her mother, fly to France to be with her…. But she can’t stay with Blair and play enabler to her imagination. The most tempting ideas are the most dangerous and she knows that reality will creep in eventually, that this like everything else will crumble. That it’ll destroy what little left there is of Blair and Serena can’t let that happen. 

“Come back to New York with me,” Serena murmurs. She looks up at Blair, hopeful, just short of pleading, eyes wide and earnest and Blair has to look away before she continues. 

“…I can’t.”

And of course she can but Blair has never been one to follow orders even though she’d follow Serena to the ends of the earth, she’d follow her anywhere…just not back to New York. Not back to the Upper East Side where she’ll tie a bow in her hair as if she were a present, offering herself as a willing sacrifice to the vultures that are waiting to tear her apart. 

No matter how Blair wants to play it, she knows she won’t win. She’ll either lose Serena or she’ll lose herself and she wonders if Serena knows this, if she’s known it all along.   
But Blair doesn’t ask, remains stubbornly silent, tries to hold in hot tears that are prickling at the corners of her eyes and threatening to give her away. 

She hears the hesitant sound of a zipper punctuate the silence, then the rustling of clothes. Blair feels the light touch of Serena’s hand on her bare shoulder and then the mattress dips, rises again. She knows that when she turns around, Serena will be gone.


End file.
